What we need to keep a close watch on is what it does to prices. Will they use their position to artificially inflate the price of electricity? Or shut down existing charge points to limit supply?
Hopefully this is just them diversifying to get ahead of declining revenue of their main product, and not something more nefarious.
Maybe but they have significantly less power to maneuver with solar, batteries and on-premise charging. All property is potentially a cheap gas station and for those that don't own a home with cheap electricity or solar, I'd guess that the market would respond with some form of airbnb for charging if prices at charging stations got too out of whack. Shell doesn't have the ability to create the strangle-hold that is possible with gas.
I wouldn't be surprised if the gas stations make as much from the convenience store angle as the gas. And with charging stations, which slow things down, people have time on their hands - they can't pump and leave.
Then most of them earn they keep on being convenience stores.
That arguably can't be true, because every gas station pays the same tax. That means, if you removed the tax, gas stations would still be making almost zero profit on gas (but the gas would be cheaper to customer by the amount of tax). Competitive pressure pretty much ensures that.
Like maybe having a good supply of oil to run diesel generators to supply power for charging stations, maybe?
The only way I see that the competitors being crushed is through IP. But for me that seems a little farfetched
But maybe someone smarter can tell me I'm wrong as I'm kinda curious about this.